“And how is that money to be gotten?” returned the fosterer, indignantly. “By the worst robbery of all—the plunder of a husband by the woman who should stick to him to the death!”
“Stay, just and hear me.”
“Not another minute!” exclaimed Mark Antony. “Every moment I remain here, I feel as if I were giving encouragement to a thief.”
It has been said, that “hell has no fury like a woman spurned; and Airs. Spicer proved that truth. Her colour fled the glow of passion with which she had vainly urged the honest Irishman to share her ill-acquired wealth, changed to the ashy hue of hatred and, springing suddenly forward, she placed her back against the door to bar the fosterer’s egress. He took her arm, and firmly but quieth, repeated his determination to leave the house.
“Never!” she exclaimed, “unless you take me with you.”
“Are you mad, woman?” returned the fosterer; “and would you keep me here until your husband returned, and discovered jour villanous intentions against himself?”
At the moment, a strong force from without dislodged the lady from the door, and the voice of the ratcatcher continued,—“And, upon my soul! that may be done without much loss of time, as the honest man and a couple of d——d ill-looking acquaintances, are coming round the corner.”
The announcement of Mr. Spicer’s advent produced an instant and awful effect on the feelings and countenance of his amiable consort.
“Holy Antony!” she exclaimed; “we’re all ruined and undone. Off with ye at once!” and she sprang forward to the window, and after a hurried glance down the street, added, in a voice of terror, “Lost! lost!—it’s too late—and there will be murder! Ha! I have it—quick, quick!” and after locking Mr. Spicer’s treasury, she rushed up stairs, followed by Mark Antony and his guardian genius, Shemus Rhua.
Mrs. Spicer stopped before a door on the first landing-place of the upper story, and unlocking it, introduced her visitors into a dark apartment, filled with lumber and old furniture; and having cautioned them to be silent, as every movement could be heard in the next room, she hastily retired, with an assurance that she would deliver them from captivity so soon as she “made the ould screw safe.”